Converting personal messages (step 1)... Duplicate entry 'xxxxx'

[chelseaphil]

OK, after my problems yesterday I decided to take the advice of a member on here and take the opportunity to upgrade to smf2. Luckily I had a back up from August that was set up on phpbb.  I do not have a current back up that is accessible. So I thought do the convert. All went well until I got this message:
Converting personal messages (step 1)...
Duplicate entry '91717' for key 'PRIMARY'

Trouble is I find the key delete and another pops up. I have over 200,000 PMs. It is a fairly large forum with over 7000 members.

How on earth can I speed things up without having to go through every single Duplicate key. Actually there are no duplicates that I can see. Please help someone

[kat]

I realise that this isn't a "solution", as such... But, in a great number of instances, restarting the converter somehow "cures" these things.

Have you tried repairing the database, in CPanel, though?

[chelseaphil]

Yeah done that. When you say restart do you mean literally from the very beginning?

[kat]

Reading through a load of topics, earlier, it seems that just restarting that step can work, or the whole thing.

Sorry that it's all a bit "hit'n'miss"...

[margarett]

I don't know which converter you're using, but any way it should be similar. Edit the .sql file, find this bit of code:

Code Select Expand

/******************************************************************************/
--- Converting personal messages (step 1)...
/******************************************************************************/

TRUNCATE {$to_prefix}personal_messages;

---* {$to_prefix}personal_messages

Add after:

Code Select Expand

---{
$ignore = true;
---}

It should ignore the duplicate IDs automatically